Contemporary operating systems such as Microsoft® Windows® XP display status icon for network connectivity in a taskbar's notification area referred to as the system tray. The system tray occupies a relatively large area portion of the taskbar, which is a valuable display area to users, and for most users is always on. However, the system tray has over the years become populated with numerous poorly designed, inconsistent and widely varying icons. For example, there may be icons for programs, for devices such as printers, for wireless networking (sometimes including one icon for the operating system's wireless management program and one icon for a wireless card manufacturer's program), and so forth.
Moreover, a particular computer can have multiple network connections at any time, in which event there is one icon for each network connection in the system tray. To determine the overall connectivity status of a computer when multiple network connections are present, an end user needs to examine and possibly interact with each of the multiple icons representing the various network connections. For example, in Windows® XP, a local area network (LAN) connection and a connection manager connection such as for a remote access server (RAS) connection each have their own icon. If the RAS connection is over the Internet via the LAN connection, the icons look the same, e.g., two semi-overlaid computer displays that light up in light blue during communication and turn dark when idle (with a forward/lower/left display representation lighting up when sending and a rearward/upper/right display representation lighting up when receiving).
Although the user can glance at the system tray to see connectivity, the user will see multiple icons for the multiple connections, whereby determine which icon is for which connection, the user is required to interact with (e.g., click on or hover over) the icons. Moreover, because of the large number of icons in a typical system tray, some of the icons may be hidden, and the user may have to interact with the system tray to expand the system tray to see those hidden icons.